Good News For Miserable Lawyers, Sort Of

The Association of Corporate Counsel released its annual Chief Legal Officer survey this week and it bears good news for those hoping to escape the BigLaw treadmill.

More than a quarter of the 970 survey respondents said they plan to hire in-house staff in 2010, up 6% from last year.

Of those already in desirable in-house jobs, 51% said they experienced a weightier workload and 34% said there was a cut in spending on outside counsel.

Thus the sort of good news. The less spending on outside counsel obviously means fewer hours for those still toiling away at firms.

There was also a slight uptick (3%) from last year in using alternative fee arrangements, from 41% to 44%.

Basically, if you wanna move in-house, its a good year (and why wouldn’t you since 91% of respondents are satisfied with their career). If you are a BigLaw attorney who’s clients plan to be more dependent of their in-house team, you are going to get less work and more push back on billing arrangements.

So the recession made some already-happy lawyers more happy and it looks like they’re going to stay the course. Maybe this is the year you’ll join them!